* * * * *

No one had interrupted Harry. His brother had put a shovelful of coals on
the fire, to keep up the flame; but not a word had been spoken. The cold
moon had shone in at the windows all the time, her light made yet colder
by the snowy sheen from the face of the earth; and any horror that the
story could generate had had full freedom to operate on the minds of the
listeners.

"Well, I'm glad its over, for my part," said Mrs. Bloomfield. "It made my
flesh creep."

"I do not see any good in founding a story upon a superstition. One knows
it is false, all the time," said Mrs. Cathcart.

"But," said Harry, "all that I have related might have taken place; for
the story is not founded on the superstition itself, but on the belief of
the people of the time in the superstition. I have merely used this belief
to give the general tone to the story, and sometimes the particular
occasion for events in it, the vampire being a terrible fact to those
times."

"You write," said the curate, "as if you quoted occasionally from some
authority."

"The story of John Kuntz, as well as that of the shoemaker, is told by
Henry More in his _Antidote against Atheism_. He believed the whole
affair. His authority is Martin Weinrich, a Silesian doctor. I have only
taken the liberty of shifting the scene of the _post-mortem_ exploits of